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Life is too short to eat bad food! Sharing great recipes, farm life, stories and photography from our Northern California dairy farm.

January 19, 2010

Raw Milk or Pasteurized? + Thermos Ready Smoothie

Many times, when I meet someone new or when someone finds out that we have a dairy, the next comment from them is, "I guess you don't have to buy milk at the grocery store." They are surprised when I tell them we buy pasteurized milk.

The data that I have researched states, young children and older adults are more susceptible to the bacteria that can be found in raw milk.
For our family, when the kids were under two years of age, I felt more comfortable having them drink pasteurized milk. Now, I'm not saying if we happened to run out of milk one morning, that I wouldn't drive down to the milk tank with a pitcher and fill up. All that creamy goodness of full fat milk is such a treat. But for us (or me), having peace of mind drinking pasteurized milk on a regular basis when the kids were really young was the choice for our family. I also love that vitamin D is added to pasteurized milk as well.....a good thing.

Are you weighing the risks and benefits of raw milk and deciding what the best milk is for your family?

The answers will vary depending on who you ask. Raw milk—milk that is not pasteurized or homogenized—is making its way into more cereal bowls, with 29 states now allowing the sale of raw milk under varying restrictions. Raw-milk proponents will pay upwards of $10 a gallon, because they believe it is safe and healthier. There are many testimonials about raw milk’s ability to relieve asthma, autism and allergies is further fueling the demand, though much of this praise remains anecdotal with few studies to back up these claims. Fans of raw milk claim it dishes out more flavor, vitamins, minerals and beneficial proteins, enzymes and bacteria than milk that has been “degraded” during pasteurization.

But the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA beg to differ, stating that pasteurized milk has all the same nutrients as raw milk and that raw milk comes with an added risk of pathogen outbreaks.

Catherine W. Donnelly, Ph.D., a food microbiologist at the University of Vermont, believes that the dangers cancel out any potential nutritional benefits. “Of particular concern is Listeria [a bacterium that results in a foodborne illness, listeriosis], which has a 30 percent mortality rate,” Donnelly warns. “If raw milk is your choice, it’s buyer beware.” When USDA scientists collected raw milk samples from 861 farms in 21 states, nearly a quarter of them contained bacteria linked to human illness, including 5 percent that tested positive for Listeria.

Deciding whether to take the risks associated with drinking raw milk is only one of the health-related choices you need to make when it comes to choosing the best milk for your family.